


empty spaces

by feyluke



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, I Was Drunk When I Wrote This, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), WHAT IS GRAMMAR, bucky is nocturnal and steve can't sleep, i try to tighten my sentences but then i don’t like them so i change them back, there's a lot of telling in this but shhhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 23:41:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13669740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyluke/pseuds/feyluke
Summary: It’s different at night. To say the soldier feels calmer isn’t quite accurate - it’s the expanse and the quiet. Less hustle. Breathing, existing, comes just a little easier when there’s no one watching. He feels like his own person; he feels like he’s reclaiming the night from violence and blood and deafening static.





	empty spaces

**Author's Note:**

> based on my own art prompts on [inflomora-art’s post](http://inflomora-art.tumblr.com/post/170276033597): playing jenga / assembling a couch / they have bruises / bucky just ate yogurt like 2 weeks expired and steve is digusted / watch a sunrise
> 
> uhhhh i tried p hard to keep the names/descriptors consistent with bucky’s fractured sense of self, but please do point out anything that doesn’t make sense
> 
> ps is bucky being a bookworm canon or fanon? help a “havent-read-any-of-the-comics-or-watched-any-media-outside-the-mcu” parttime fangirl out

It’s different at night. To say the soldier feels calmer isn’t quite accurate - it’s the expanse and the quiet. Less hustle. Breathing, existing, comes just a little easier when there’s no one watching. He feels like his own person; he feels like he’s reclaiming the night from violence and blood and deafening static.

 

It sort of just happened. After the failed mission, after pulling Steve from the water, he eventually crashed somewhere in an abandoned farmhouse. When he woke, there was no telling how long he’d actually been out for. It was dusk, and he remembers sitting out on the crumbling porch until sunrise. No sound but crickets. No movement but for wind and insects. 

When the sun began to rise, the light was an instant knife in his left eye and temple. He retreated into the farmhouse until the knife stopped twisting. On maybe the third night he woke to sharp pains in his stomach and, remembering that the body needs food, went hunting.

And so it went - the failed soldier’s new fragmented yet autonomous routine was a nocturnal one. 

 

Long after his body healed from the aftermath of the failed mission, he still felt bruised all over. He could barely breathe. He has hazy memories of checking his ribs for injury on a daily basis. There was the one night he risked capture, checked himself into emergency, and argued with an overworked doctor on a double shift who kept insisting that there were no breaks or fractures and would he like to speak with a therapist maybe? He vividly remembers saying that he didn’t need a therapist, he needed a competent doctor. The way the doctor’s face shut down made him feel something churning and sickly in his stomach. He knows now it was guilt. He knows now what a lot of emotions feel like. Slowly, surely, and all in retrospect.

 

He’s not always alone at night anymore. 

Everyone on the Avengers team goes through periods of insomnia. At first it made his skin crawl and temple pound and his nights became stealth missions, ensuring at all costs that his presence wasn’t registered.

Then one morning, as he quietly moved through a crawlspace above the kitchen, he overheard Barton saying: “Does Barnes actually exist? Did we all have a mutual hallucination those couple days?” to Romanov. It was off-handed, and it was clearly a joke, but Rogers heard it. You could tell Rogers overheard and was annoyed, because he began talking loudly to Maximoff about the Halloween that he and Bucky dressed up as rich people.

After that, as nice and comforting as it felt to consider that if he kept up with his stealth missions long enough the team might actually start to question his existence, he stopped moving out of sight whenever a sleep-deprived Avenger shuffled into the same room. 

 

The easiest nights, hands down, are when Natasha wordlessly pours them both a drink and they sit out on the balcony, only breaking silence to point out a constellation. He’d forgotten them, but their forms and names slowly came back. The building is tall enough that skyscrapers aren’t a hindrance, and on clear, dry nights the tiny speckling of stars expands a little. 

Lately, she brings him a book the size of a brick and lays her head in his lap. He reads the book aloud while she hums songs that he doesn’t know, resting her eyes and heart while her brain fires off in a million directions. 

 

The hardest nights are when Tony stalks into a room, almost as though he’s actually been pacing the halls looking for him, and resolutely sits or stands roughly 10 feet away. 

They never look at each other and the air is so thick the soldier can feel it pressing against and inside of his ribcage. He knows the bruising is psychological, but he’s still found himself checking for invisible injury some early mornings just before bed. The air hasn’t become any less thick, no matter how many nights they insist on circling this routine, but the soldier thinks perhaps Tony is waiting for it to lessen just as much as he is. Baby steps. Slow, agonizing, exhausting baby steps. 

Maybe one day they’ll be able exchange words that aren’t hurtful. 

Maybe one day they’ll be able to look at each other.

 

Steve’s insomnia bouts are maybe the worst, at least in quantity. He’ll be eventually removed from duty, shuffling through weeks on end like a zombie. His insomnia episodes had proved to create the most difficult stealth missions for the soldier - mostly because Rogers actively _looked_ for Bucky.

He’ll never tell Steve this, but no matter how often the soldier internally barked at himself to stop being so _stupid_ and just go talk to this person who was his best friend in another life, the fact was that the more space he put between himself and Rogers, the more space there seemed to be in his chest and the easier his breath came.

 

The first night Steve approached the soldier after he ended his stealth missions, Steve pulled up a chair and said, “Hey, Buck.” Then, “Oh, God, how old is that yogurt?”

“What?” Bucky asked, mouth full of peach yogurt that was perfectly fine, thank you very much.

“That has been in the fridge for more than a month! You can’t eat that!”

“No one’s opened it. It’s fine.” Did Steve forget how to be frugal and not waste good food? Had living under the same roof as Tony turned him into a damn idiot? Did he throw out the entire cheese block when it gets a speck of mold on it now, too? “I sniffed it. I stirred it. It’s good.”

Steve shook his head and sighed, as though he didn’t know what he was ever going to do with a hopeless cause like Bucky. And then the lightbulb went off. Bucky smiled. That’s right, Steve always liked giving him a hard time. 

“Have some.” He handed the spoon to Steve.

It was later when Bucky crawled into bed that he realized he didn’t feel bruising on his ribs even once the entire night.

 

When the soldier imagined a stealth mission failing and accidentally spending time with Rogers, he had figured they’d spend most of their time sparring or training or something else super masculine. Punching bags. Weights. 

When he actively ended the stealth missions, he envisioned awkward silence and each of his ribs snapping in a different spot every time Rogers looked at him with that expectant expression that asked more of him than he could offer.

Instead, it’s mostly Bucky making Steve food and making sure he drinks water. It’s fixing broken couch legs; repairing the third floor shower; Steve chatting away while Bucky mends his metal arm after a sparring match with Thor got out of hand. It’s going for walks around the city with whichever other Avenger might also be unable to sleep and pouring lots of drinks. It’s the soldier’s rib bones slowly stitching themselves back together with every memory pulled up from the corners of his brain that Bucky shares with Steve.

Somehow, it’s a lot of quiet happiness. That light feeling that curls between his ribs and makes his eyes squint and feel too bright even while the rest of his face remains blank. He remembers it: remembers going to Steve’s after school to do homework and pretty much doing anything but homework; taking a pretty girl on a date; Steve coming over for Christmas; the giddy adrenaline after a carnival ride; playing dolls with his sisters. (He remembers the long, vast void of it. Did the soldier ever feel happiness?)

 

He’s been trying to shift sleeping patterns so he sleeps during the night like a normal person. It’s mostly resulted in more migraines and instead of taking up Sam’s offer to see his family doctor for some medication that could help with the pain and refer him to a sleep specialist, Bucky just stops trying to adjust the sleeping schedule. He’s eventually cleared for duty and helps the team with any night missions and it’s good.

In any case, it’s good for Steve to have a friend around when he’s unable to sleep. The bouts last less each time they come around. 

And whether any of the Avengers are having trouble sleeping or not, Bucky makes sure to see them in the late evenings and early mornings. Steve gives him some sunglasses so he can stay up later and go for morning runs with Steve and Sam. Pepper gives him a stick of peppermint balm that’s supposed to help with headaches, and for the smaller ones it actually really does. Clint starts making him peppermint tea before bed. It’s not perfect but social interaction, while making his skin crawl, is a good thing. It’s _good._

 

They’ve been talking all night. 

Somehow a steady stream of words and sentences have been spiraling out of Bucky’s mouth - he can barely keep up with his thoughts. The part of him that is still the soldier is curling inside of itself, senses overshot by all these words that it never had the capacity for. He brings a hand to his chest, sort of cradling the soldier and keeping it from expanding too far inside his chest cavity. 

Steve’s on day eight of no sleep and looks fucking terrible. The bags under his eyes are bruised and he sort of smells - Bucky’s going to have to insist on a shower no matter how much Steve balks. 

“God and then the way Sam just dove down on that bastard like, like - “ Bucky wracks his brain for the Quidditch move from the Harry Potter books that Pepper gave him and waves his metal hand around while his brain spins. “Like a frickin’ Wronski Feint. I thought for sure he’d hit the pavement.”

He’s so excited he nearly hits the Jenga tower that is stacked precariously between them. Steve lurches forward and spreads his hands out as if to catch it. The tower wavers slightly, but stays in tact. Steve glares at him, his eyes dilated with panic.

“You know if you knock it over, even if it’s during my turn, you lose, right?” 

Even as he spits out the words, Steve’s spasm of ire is already gone as he directs all of his attention to inspecting the tower for weaknesses. 

Bucky pushes his hair out of his eyes. “Anyway so it reminded me of when you made that crappy skateboard out of the scraps in the alley and bust your face open on the sidewalk by Ms Kerrington’s house. And I had to teach your stupid ass why wheel bearings are important.”

Steve hums in agreement as he finally finishes his careful extraction of a piece, the tower wobbling dangerously, and delicately sets it on the top of the tower, clapping his hands in victory. “Ha! Good luck, Buck, this thing is impenetrable.”

As Bucky apprasies the tower, gently tapping each piece and further describing Sam’s performance during the last mission he aided in, he has to momentarily close his eyes. He’s been up since noon and the sun is rising and he feels the familiar sharp prick that foreshadows an entire day in bed unable to sleep.

“So how do you get any fighting done when you’re watching Sam’s every move?” Steve asks. 

When Bucky cracks one eye open to look at him, Steve’s easy grin is taking over the left side of his face. His eyes are like crystal in the morning sun. Another twist of pain behind Bucky’s eyes makes him bring a hand to his face, thumb and fingers digging into the corners of his eyes, his jaw clenching. 

Steve continues: “I’m just saying. Quite the multi-tasker you are.”

The distraction works and Bucky opens his eyes again, plucking a piece from the bottom of the tower and placing it on top. Steve huffs in annoyance. 

Bucky is quiet now, nursing his budding migraine until the game is over and he can make Steve shower and then go to bed. Steve’s next move is hasty and unsuccessful, the tower toppling down with a crash that richochets around Bucky’s skull.

He’s suddenly so irritated he feels himself scowling. “If you lose on purpose, then I don’t really win.”

Steve rolls his eyes and leans forward, hand catching Bucky’s chin, thumbing the indentation there. Steve presses their foreheads together and Bucky feels the irritation pressing against the inside of his ribs sort of deflate.

It’s a really nice moment. Serene and calm, like the night.

And then Bucky has to ruin it. 

“God, you stink.”

**Author's Note:**

> so i know eyes like crystal is a pretty bad simile but i decided not to fix it because hey bucky is HAPPY we’re not at our literary best when we’re happy ok the cheesiness runs wild when we’re full of joy
> 
> hmu on [tumblr](http://feyluke.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
